While there may be simple dental SEO factors within a website’s coding that need to be addressed, most competitive areas require ongoing monitoring to ensure no other dental website passes you up. If SEO is priced at $300/month, they can’t create useful, engaging content. Especially after half of your money goes to pay the sales force that cold called you in the first place.

#2 Bragging About The Size of Sales Force

A true dental SEO expert doesn’t brag about his sales force. Rather, you should inquire about the kinds of relationships the SEO expert has with people within the dental industry or other websites they can publish on.

Dr. Seth Lookhart has dental offices in 3 countries and is widely considered an accomplished dentist. He says “When looking for an SEO consultant, I wasn’t interested in finding the cheapest there is. It’s about ROI, and knowing that everything is running efficiently.”

More and more dental offices are interested in knowing the SEO tactics actually being used, rather than getting sucked into a sales process with fancy buzzwords. This dentist in Apex, NC found that the key was learning the basics about SEO, in order to gain new patients for his growing practice.

The quality of your SEO expert’s writing skills, or their staff’s ability to produce remarkable content is important. Does the writing team create stories that people care about? Does the content consistently rank atop Google? How does the SEO company handle satisfying searcher intent? There are many ways to show how successful you are in SEO, but having a boiler room full of salesmen dialing-for-dollars isn’t one of them.

#3 “Secret Sauce” SEO

Transparency in SEO is a great sign. Being able to cogently identify exactly what’s being done for your SEO is of paramount importance.

Most SEO firms who are transparent in their tactics are much more likely to have an SEO strategy that involves both higher quality content, and relevant inbound links. While you should only work with an SEO professional you trust, nothing replaces great communication about what’s actually being done. My general rule of thumb is this: if they can’t explain in plain english what’s being done, it probably isn’t that great.

So what SHOULD you look for?

Look for an SEO expert that teaches about SEO. Thought leadership is a great sign in a consultant or company that claims to understand Google’s algorithms.

Work with an SEO expert that assesses your unique needs, before pitching a “sale.” By doing some quick keyword research, you can find out exactly how many people are searching for dental services in your area. Before you make the upfront investment.

A firm grasp of the dental industry. The SEO expert should be able to provide a wide array of dental marketing ideas that help SEO, and new patient flow. By knowing about the dental industry, SEO works much more seamlessly. From knowing which types of websites to earn links from, to knowing the kind of dental content Google favors, you can be sure that a dental SEO expert can be superior to a general SEO company.

Justin L. Morgan, known in the dental industry as “The Dental Marketing Guy,” teaches about dental marketing on his blog and YouTube show. Justin has been featured in major media outlets such as Dental Products Report, Dentistry Today, Dentistry IQ, Dental Town, Entrepreneur, and a number of Fortune 500 company blogs. He is the creator of The Invisalinks Method, the first and only SEO course for dental professionals.